


The View From Under the Bed

by VJR22_6



Category: Darkwing Duck (Cartoon 1991), DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: (gos’s grandpa dies at the beginning), (in the sense canon’s gonna quickly invalidate this), AU, Adoption, Angst with a Happy Ending, Child Abuse, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Meetings, Found Family, Gen, Minor Character Death, Minor Drake Mallard/Launchpad McQuack, Running Away, foster kid, tws for the following, wow proper tags and everything?! it’s almost like i’m a writer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:28:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26251198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VJR22_6/pseuds/VJR22_6
Summary: Gosalyn is bold, courageous, and smart, but beneath her troublemaking exterior she’s just a child. A child who lost her parents too young to remember them, and then her Grandpa, and then was sent from foster home to foster home, where things just kept getting worse. She’s overwhelmed by emotions she can’t make sense of, alone and reeling in the wake of a tragedy nobody bothered to ask if she was okay after. There’s only so much her spirit can take before she breaks.
Relationships: Drake Mallard & Gosalyn Mallard
Comments: 24
Kudos: 102





	The View From Under the Bed

**Author's Note:**

> GUYS IM SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS ONE ITS SO LONG AND GOOD AND IVE BEEN WORKING ON IT FOR FIVE MONTHS!!! This is my third full draft and it’s the longest thing I’ve ever created and oh my god thank you a million times to my friends who beta read and gave me feedback!!! Especially to my redliner who helped me perfect this—I owe you the stars.
> 
> The concept for this fic is essentially looking at how Gos lost her parents, presumably, and then her Grandpa, but her trauma never got addressed. She would’ve been pretty emotional, don’t you think?
> 
> I hope you all like it! Any and all comments are appreciated, be it keysmashes, emojis, even just lines you liked enough to copy and repeat back to me. Thank you!

The house is quiet. Gosalyn’s window is open just enough to let a whisper of a breeze in, ruffling her green curtains like emerald waves. She has her warmest blanket and a soft pillow, and she’s nearly asleep.

The lights are off in the hall, which means her Grandpa is in bed himself across the way. She lies there, dozing and nearly fully asleep, but then the sound of shattering glass startles her to alertness. She scrambles to get up, on instant anxious alert that Grandpa might have slipped and broken his bedside water glass. She stops with her little feet barely hanging off the bed—that crash was far too big to be a smashed cup. The only other things that could’ve made that much noise while shattering are the TV or the window.

She hears an unfamiliar, loud voice, and ducks under her bed instead of heading to the door. Her heart begins to pick up pace, first as if she’s jogging and then to the speed it hits when she’s at an outright sprint across the soccer field. A tense moment passes, how long she’s not sure. Footsteps walk in, and the light clicks on for a moment. A squeaky, nervous voice calls back out into the hall, “Where’s the gorl? The boss ain’t gonna be happy if this little accident don’t take care’a her too!”

“Maybe she’s at a friend’s house, huh? Oh, uh, maybe we should’ve asked ol’ Waddlemeyer where she’s at.” A second voice, scratchy and hoarse, replies from somewhere far out of sight. She hears a thumping sound and a handful of curse words, but doesn’t react, startled into a frozen stillness and holding her breath as long as she can.

“Well we can’t now. Keep looking for ‘er.” The first voice, belonging to a pair of dirty white shoes and pinstriped pants, vanishes, shutting the light off on its way. Probably an old habit, but the sudden darkness doesn’t help her nerves. Despite that fear, Gosalyn doesn’t move, releasing a long breath and drawing another in. Her head starts spinning and she fights back bile in her throat. What did he mean they “couldn’t now?” What had they done with Grandpa?

Her whole body is tense, and she feels like she might explode if she can’t catch her breath soon. Grandpa didn’t make a sound, and she’s worried he’s not even out there anymore. And what if he isn’t? What if he’s hurt, or gone, or…. Gosalyn tries to push all the bad thoughts away. She can’t do a thing from here, squished in this shoebox of a space, can only wait and listen and try to keep her breathing, which is quickly getting more rapid, somewhat quiet.

For the most part, she’s successful in silent panicking. She lies there as unmoving as the forgotten toys and dirty laundry she’s curled up among. She waits until they walk through the house, voices and footsteps growing distant, and stays frozen until the back door opens and closes, and then everything falls still. Too still—she’s got to do something.

Her exit from her hiding place is quiet, the sounds of her scooting out of the tiny space ringing into empty air. The house is very, very cold now, icy air rushing in in full force from across the hall. She clutches her arms, pulling her short sleeves toward her elbows as she pokes her head out the door, gazing around like a deer on a night-dark highway, scanning the shadows for lingering threats.

The end-table beside the bathroom door is crooked, the potted plant on top now sideways and halfway over the edge. Someone had tripped on it in the darkness, and she thinks briefly of the stumbling sounds and the cursing from earlier. A sense of dread fills her as she compares that to the total silence that surrounds her now. As she approaches Grandpa’s door, she begins to tremble violently.

Later, she’ll remember exactly how each footstep across the hall feels. The heaviness of her legs, the tickles of cold air and fear ruffling the feathers on her arms, and how her heart feels like it’s collapsing in on itself when her search comes to a stop.

Her Grandpa is lying on the floor, crumpled like a dropped doll, his life pouring out onto the hardwood. Gosalyn’s beak falls open in a scream that she feels will go on forever, if only in a small part of her mind.

She can’t quite remember the details of what comes after. Mostly silence, alone for a moment, and then sirens arrive, painting the house in their swirling emergency lights. Somber blues and harsh reds fill every window, but none of them are quick enough to help. She’s shuffled outside when officers flood the place, hurrying to take note of the mess left in the wake of tragedy. Voices reach her from every angle, from worried neighbors in pajamas, staring from their lawns and porches. She hardly has the energy to react but it’s enough to make her want to wail like the police sirens are.

The fray isn’t all terrible, though, as from it comes a set of warm hands, offering her a coat to wrap around her skinny shoulders.

She looks up at the one face in this sea of onlookers with concern for her. Her savior-of-sorts is wearing big orange earrings and has a police badge hanging over her chest. She stands straight and tall, projecting confidence along with her warm personality. Gos can tell this is a trustworthy woman.

“Th—thanks,” Gosalyn manages to whisper, drawing the big jacket around her shoulders. She sinks onto the cold concrete of the porch steps, and the officer sits with her. It’s winter still, cold frost clinging to the grass, but the cop doesn’t seem to mind the chill.

“I’m Officer Cabrera,” she tells Gosalyn gently, ignoring the clamor of fellow officers yelling to one another from inside and across the yard. “What’s your name?”

“Gosalyn,” she croaks, voice sore from more than just the screaming. Everything is a terrible whirlwind of others invading her space and ignoring her and she can hardly focus under all the things she’s trying to comprehend. “Gosalyn Waddlemeyer.”

“That’s a pretty name,” she murmurs, smiling warmly. Empathetically. Gosalyn will receive a lot of condolences in the coming days, lots of sorry smiles and empty apologies for a crime that they weren’t there to see. But this smile, the gentle presence here, is genuine, and it helps Gos muddle through the haze clouding her head.

“Thank you,” Gosalyn replies, thinking of her grandfather’s lessons in manners. Thinking of him in everything she does, really, before and after all of this. It just didn’t hurt before, and now… now she feels like the blinking neon of a vacant hotel, calling out for anyone to see her and come near.

“You’re going to be alright,” Officer Cabrera promises. “It might be a while, a few months or a year from now, but I can promise you, you’re gonna be alright. You’re strong enough to get yourself to that point.”

Somehow, in the cloud of fierce frustration, the hollowness of misery, and the emptiness of losing control, Gosalyn takes the promise to heart.

The officer asks her what happened, asks her what she heard and saw and did. It hurts, but she does, down to the feeling of the hardwood beneath her and the bloody red that was spilling everywhere, staining everything including her memory. She tells the whole truth because she knows that if she does it will be easiest for these cops to catch the pinstriped suit-wearer and the unseen voice in the hall, and whoever “the boss” was that they mentioned.

Officer Cabrera takes all of it down. She asks a few questions, but mostly nods and just takes Gosalyn’s words down as if she’s copying the words of a prophet. Gosalyn wonders, numbly, if any of this will make a difference.

Doesn’t really affect Grandpa either way, she thinks, heart bitten with something sour at the things she isn’t able to do.

She takes a shaky breath when she’s said all she can, stares blankly out at the yard. The sun will be up soon. The sky is already lightening in daily preparation for morning. Then all the frost on the grass will melt, and the clingy gray clouds overhead will either blow away or turn to a storm.

Gosalyn doesn’t know if she would prefer it to be snow or rain, but snow would remind her of holidays at home and thunder used to scare her into Grandpa’s arms. In any case she’s going to have to face the world without a home and family now. For all her spirit, for all her bold choices and brave moves, she’s left dizzy and chilled thinking of how massive the world is. She has no one to look up to anymore, after losing both her parents when she was small and now her Grandpa at the age of ten. The thought of loss sets in as much as the anxiety of loneliness does, and she’s left with a heavy sadness that she’s entirely unequipped to handle.

Officer Cabrera drives her to the police station before daybreak, and she’s handed off to a social worker with too-long legs and a nasal voice. Gos hands back the comforting jacket and they part ways, and she begins to understand quite quickly that the world is not in her favor anymore, if it ever was at all.

She’s allowed to pack a single backpack of her things before they make her move on. They’ll sell the house to pay off her grandfather's loans for lab equipment and projects, and most of their things will be sold off too. No relatives to give them to, or Gosalyn would be going to them. It’s what he had wanted, they say, so despite her protests it’s what’s going to happen.

They let her back to the house on a supervised trip, and she heads up to her room quickly. It’s a mess and she knows she’s got to leave most of it behind, staring at a floor littered with toys she’s never going to play with again and clothes she won’t wear anymore. The next chapter of her story is one that will be narrated by people who hardly know her, and she knows most won't care for her much, if at all.

She grabs a change of street clothes, ones she won’t mind getting torn up. She has a suspicion that anything with sentimental value is going to be hard to wear given the person who made it valuable to her is gone now. Then, she glances around the room at the discarded possessions, and makes the first hard choice of many.

She won’t take any of it.

Instead, she opts to leave her bedroom again and look quickly away from the now sealed-up room across the hall. She slides down the banister one last time, much to the chagrin of her babysitting social worker. She heads to the tv room, and starts gathering up the Darkwing merch.

Grandpa didn’t care much for the old show, but Gosalyn? There was nothing she loved to do more, and still does, than watch a rerun of Darkwing. She tucks the figurines and the plushes and the dvd set into her bag, careful with each one but determined to make her little collection fit in the space she’s been allotted for her whole life to be packed into.

Her social worker frowns in the doorway. “Wouldn’t you rather some dolls, or a dress or two?”

“You said I could take anything I wanted!” Gosalyn retorts quickly and sharply. Her heart is full of something dark, a storm raging against the boxes she’s always forced into. “I want this.”

“Alright, alright,” the tall bird stands up a bit straighter. She shakes her head, as if she can’t believe a little girl would choose these things above all else. But Gosalyn is not, nor has she ever been, just any girl.

Someone will see that in her again someday, she hopes. If she’s going to survive she’ll need someone who understands.

The backpack is full when she’s done with it, just a small bit of room at the top for something special. She looks up to the row of pictures on the wall, heart aching like a wildfire burnt through it. One memory preserved physically, despite the fact she’s got all of them in her phone.

She pulls down the framed picture she’s most fond of, one of the two of them in his lab. She’s got shorts on, band-aids on both knees from a roller hockey accident, and a lopsided smile with her missing front tooth not grown in yet. He’s grinning both over her, sitting on the counter beside him, and the invention he’s presenting to the camera. The ramrod, she remembers him saying. She can’t quite remember what it did, but she knows it meant the world to him. His pride and joy, he would always joke, and she’d protest that that was her title to wear.

She tucks the photo away carefully as she can, and hauls herself to her feet. She looks around, suddenly struck with the thought that she’s not going to come back here ever again. She had always assumed this would be home til she went off to college, but now…. She’s headed out into the world alright, she just thought this moment would come after she learned to drive and got to vote, not before she turned eleven.

Gosalyn pauses by the door, ignoring her social worker herding her toward the car. Her hockey stick and skates are in the corner here, forgotten momentarily but not forever. She turns to her supervisor, putting on the puppy-dog eyes, making herself look as sweet and pleading as a kid possibly could. “Can I take these too?”

“They _do_ state just the one bag, you’ll be able to settle in easier with less to un… pack….”

Gos makes her lower beak quiver best she can. She hardly has to lie, but figures there’s a trick to be pulled here. “I gotta leave all this behind, and I miss my Grandpa so much, I just want this.”

“Oh, alright. Two more things won’t be too much.” The social worker sighs the sort of sigh that says “I’m not being paid enough for this,” and gestures to the equipment.

“Yes!” Gosalyn cheers, plucking the skates up by their laces. She cannot believe that worked! She’s got to try that again sometime. Meanwhile, though, she’s looking forward to at least having hockey to help her through.

The thought isn’t a hope meant to last, though. She just doesn’t have time anymore, nor a consistent set of guardians to support it. She’s sent to four different foster homes in six months, thanks to her spirit.

The first is a set of prim-and-proper first-time parents who, with their white walls and white carpets, soon decide that fostering isn’t for them, really. Not after Gosalyn unintentionally smashes the pot of the single succulent on their coffee table, staining everything with the dirt.

The second home is an experienced couple, two kids already there waiting on Gosalyn to make three. She has her eleventh birthday there, and even though she tells her temporary guardians and the other kids what day it is about four dozen times, it goes forgotten. It’s because of that that her skin is crawling with heat and her hands are itching to let out some energy, and they find an outlet when, in a string of poor events, one of the other kids calls Gos’s Darkwing plush dorky.

It makes something in her heart snap, something she’d been forcing away since Grandpa’s death, and she chips the kid’s tooth in one swing. He cries for an hour and they’re quick to tend to him, but Gosalyn bruises her knuckles and gets ignored, and told to sit on her bed unmoving until they come to take her away again. She decides she’s taken the world record for the worst birthday ever.

Her third home, she’s placed with a strict single mother. On drop-off day she hears her ever-nasal social worker call her a “problem child, but not a problem for _you_ , I’m sure.”

This is her longest stay, and what she thinks will be her worst. This woman, who she’s instructed to call simply “Mother,” demands she earn her keep. Cleaning bedrooms and bathrooms top to bottom, cooking(which she’s quickly told will not be her chore again, after she sets the fire alarm off and ruins their lunch), and laundry washing and folding fill her days. She hardly has a chance now to play with her figurines, but she doesn’t trust “Mother” not to take them away and oh-so-conveniently forget to give them back. She also doesn’t trust the other kids, who are all older and meaner, not to ruin them. She doesn’t unpack a thing, and ends her stay by knocking over “Mother’s” hand-carved mahogany end-table while trying to stir up a little fun and play a game of baseball indoors.

Grandpa would be disappointed in her, she figures on the ride to her next home. But he’s not here, and without him she’s got to take care of herself by any means necessary. When those means are breaking things or lashing out, that’s just survival. He would understand, he would always understand. Maybe he would scold, but he would know she’s just a spirited kid and she needs a guardian who understands that to take care of her right.

Her fourth foster home is as far from understanding as she could possibly get.

This one isn’t much of a home at all, really. The woman of the house, an ashen-faced lady who seems to have lived a million lives already, doesn’t talk much. She’s friendly, but quiet, and Gos can tell right off the bat she’s super unhappy. There are no other kids here, their oldest just having moved out. The house is a tribute to their four kids, with pencil-marked heights in the doorway and photos up all over. It’s haunting how lived-in the place looks compared to how quiet and empty it is.

It’s the man of the house she’s got to worry about, almost immediately. He greets her with a grunt and a closed fist at his side, and she keeps her head down for the first few hours. Something about his size and the darkness in his expression make Gos’s skin light up in goosebumps.

They have pasta for dinner, and he doesn’t eat a bite, complaining that his wife “ought to know by now he doesn’t eat that carbs crap.” He walks out, slamming a door, and Gosalyn is left wide-eyed to watch as the house falls still. It reminds her of a Halloween attraction, how often she’s left anticipating being spooked by loud noises or violent actions.

He slams a lot more doors after that, breaks a few plates and cups, yells more than anyone she’s ever met. His wife, obviously worn to exhaustion, doesn’t even try to calm him down. He swings at her and she dodges, but ends up battered anyway.

Gos gets a black eye on her third night there.

She doesn’t intend to anger him, but she sure does, just by being there. She isn’t sure if it’s the spot she picked to sit in at the table, or the cup she poured her juice into, or if it’s just how he is that gets her hurt, but she ends up getting hit hard. She falls to the floor with a yelp and hides under the table holding the spot that got struck, shaking like a frightened chihuahua. As soon as he storms out she bolts to somewhere more safe, everything else forgotten.

Her temporary room(they’re all temporary) has a mirror on the back of the door, floor to ceiling. She leans against her bed and faces it, looking at the off-colored, sore spot around her eye and over her cheek. She’s no stranger to injuries, not after playing so many sports. This one just stings more because she didn’t have a choice but to take it, and he didn’t receive any penalty for it.

She thinks of the way Grandpa would put ice over her bruises and bumps, put band-aids on her scrapes, and chokes on a sob. She will not cry, she hasn’t since the night she lost him. She’ll be fine. She’s strong and spirited and she can do this.

A rough, ragged breath claws its way out of her throat and through her beak anyway.

Gosalyn pulls her framed photo out of her bag. She looks at the two of them grinning at the camera and lets out a whimper without meaning to. She wipes the unfightable tears away roughly, denying herself even a moment to think about it. She looks at her grandfather’s smiling face through a blur and her shoulders shake with the force of trying to breathe through the ache.

“I miss you,” she whispers. “I wish you could tell me where I’m supposed to go from here.”

Footsteps in the hall alert her to someone else coming, and she shoves the photo away. Her heart is racing for what feels like the millionth time lately, and, thinking of that tragic night, she shoves her backpack under the bed and ducks under after it. She’s not strong enough to fight him.

Her foster father bursts through the door, slamming it against the wall. From her hiding place she can see dust drift down from the wall, a sign of damage. But what in Gos’s life now isn’t a bit damaged? Even Gosalyn herself is broken goods these days, or at least the people around her act like it.

Her foster father pokes his head into the closet, huffing like a bull before it charges. “Where did that whiny brat run off to?”

She breathes slow, quietly, holding and releasing it to keep herself still. Her whole heart is left hoping he won’t check her hiding place. And she’s fortunate in that regard; he leaves without looking under the bed. He closes her door roughly, but she lies still for a while after anyway, staring into the distance and trying to make sense of the lump in her throat and the shiver down her spine.

He yells some while she’s busy focusing on breathing, then Gos hears a feeble protest from her foster mother. Nothing will come of that, she knows, and waits until she hears the front door slam. He’ll get in the car and drive for a while; if they’re lucky he won't be back til dawn. She’s wedged under the bed well, so her vision is limited, but when the slammed door shakes the house, something falls into her line of sight. She gives herself a moment to be sure of safety, then scoots out from under the bed to investigate.

It’s her hockey stick, now lying across the floor, one end propped up a tiny bit by her skates. She looks it over in a fondness now ruined with a sour sense that she’s being treated unfairly. She’s missing the ice and the… thrill of… playing on it…. She has an idea.

She doesn’t have to stay here, does she?

There’s nothing for her to pack, really, she never unpacked when she got here. She thought of shattered plates and of the memories she’s got with her Darkwing collection, and knew it was safest to keep herself bottled up. Her love for those things hasn’t been appreciated in months. She just has to wait until midnight now, her foster mother long gone to bed and her foster father still out. She slips to the kitchen, the forgotten dinner still sitting on the counter uneaten. She abandons it there despite her hunger, her black eye still stinging.

She heads for the back door, in the formal dining room. On the wall there is a huge framed photo, these parents standing proud with their kids. She can’t stop herself from wondering as she looks at them, practiced and perfect smiles, if those kids got hurt like she does now. If their growing up and leaving caused his anger, or if they just learned to hide from it when they were smaller, like her.

And she wonders if any of them ran like she’s about to.

She closes the door quietly after herself, scales the fence with athletic ease. Beyond this old house is a vacant field, full of thistles and litter and dead grass. She watches her step around discarded plastic bags and broken glass bottles, hands shaking and head spinning. She’s never considered something like this before, but she’s never needed to, and she’s starting to sweat as she thinks about what she’s walking into. She’s got no idea what she’s doing.

If she stays, the spirit her grandfather praised so often will be crushed like a wildflower under a hunter’s boot. She will no longer have the space and time to love what she does, to play sports or watch Darkwing or make trouble just for the fun of it. She’ll be trapped, as she already kind of is. Destined to do her foster father’s bidding, to clean up broken things and to always be waiting for the door to slam. She doesn’t want to spend her life wide-eyed and hiding. Even if she’s sent on to a new place, they’ll just try to tamp down the fire burning inside her and she just wants to be able to choose for herself what she does.

She finds a main street, but keeps out of the streetlights. Her foster father is still out in the city someplace and even though St Canard is huge, a voice in the back of her head whispers that he will catch her again if she’s not careful, so she doesn’t let herself be seen. She feels like there’s eyes on her at every corner, no matter how much she tries to tell herself that’s just her head playing tricks on her. Just her imagination, just her making up things like shadows passing overhead and noises in the alleys she’s passing.

These roads are ones she travelled with Grandpa often, ones she remembers now with a heaviness in her chest. Many of the places she’s passing are places she remembers going with him. That alone makes this walk hard, but piled on top is a sense of urgency about getting where she’s going. Every time she hears or sees an oncoming car, she’s nearly overwhelmed with a temptation to leap into the shadows, and just as she heads for the darkened alleys between buildings, the shadows make sounds she can’t see the sources of. Everything around her feels like she’s about to be pounced on by some invisible predator, caught and dragged back to the house of broken things and painful wounds.

She thinks to herself as she walks that maybe the threat of being _spotted_ isn’t what’s scariest. It’s not being able to _protect_ herself, and not having anyone left in her life strong enough to do so that’s actually willing to stand up for her. She wasn’t strong enough to do anything but hide the night Grandpa died, so what would make her strong enough to be her own hero this time? She’s tried to fight for herself, with other kids at least, but she always loses out in the end even if she wins the fight.

Tonight’s her night, though. Whatever happens next, she will let happen, but she needs to let go for a minute. If she can have five minutes to skate, maybe find a puck to whack around, she’ll go quietly wherever they want her to. She just needs to get this constantly suffocating weight off her chest and she thinks that breathing in some icy air will do that.

The front doors are locked, of course they are, but Gosalyn knows this place. It used to be her home away from home. One of the back doors is always propped open, even at night, because the security guys use it to get out to their cars and they don’t want to get locked out. She slips inside easily, spots the guard at the camera station asleep.

He’ll be out for a bit, and she knows they only keep one night guard on staff on weeknights. She played a lot of locker room pranks with her old teammates, and they learned things like that after their first few tries failed. The stars are aligning. She’s finally got a chance to do something for herself!

She sneaks through the main hall. She hasn’t had the ability or time to be on the team this season, and she’s sure what used to be her locker is full now. There’s nothing left in that locker room for her except memories that’ll hurt.

She pushes open the door to the ice, which is crystalline and smooth. The rush of cold air that hits her is a lot like the icy air when she crawled out from under her bed to find a body on the bedroom floor across the hall. But this is different too, for all the right reasons, and it feels like a homecoming. This is a cold beak split wide in a smile, cheering as they win a game. This is a wind across her cheeks, thrilled in the heat of the match.

This is what she was born to be doing.

She sets her backpack by the gate, swaps her sneakers for skates. There’s a few discarded pucks at the bottom of the stairs, probably forgotten after practice. She plucks one up and the familiar weight of it spreads a smile across her face. She’s got this.

The ice is polished smooth after yesterday’s skating, and the air is crisp and still. The only lights are the two golden emergency lights, leaving a lot of shadows around the rink. Unlike the shadows on her journey here, though, these are just a background. She doesn’t bother to stop and consider what they might conceal.

She opens the gate and steps onto the ice gently, her racing heart calming at last. She pushes forward with her right foot, gliding onto the rink. The gate clicks behind her, echoing before the whole big room fades to silence once more. She takes a deep breath, a cool breeze gracing her cheeks.

She sticks her arms out just a bit, her hockey stick clutched in one hand, gracefully skating along. When she reaches the far side of the rink, she leans to turn, and then tosses her picked up puck onto the ice a few feet ahead. She’s here at last.

It takes one swing to launch it into the goal across the way. Even without practice for months in a row, she’s still got good aim. The realization sends a smile across her face--they took so much from her, but they can’t take this. She swings wide around the goal, knocks the puck back out, and begins to skate her way across the rink again, guiding it forward.

She speeds up, pushing herself to her limit. Her legs start to burn, and the cold air starts making her throat scratchy, but she’s focused only on the puck, on launching it into the net over and over and over again. She twirls and turns, going through the motions of moves she’d half-forgotten, locked away in houses she never belonged in. They all come back to her easily, and her eyes stay trained on her little black target, concentrated—

A knocking sound catches her attention. A pale fist is tapping the side of the rink beside the gate, echoing into the stillness of the half-lit room. It’s shadowy, but she’d recognize this person even if he were no more than a solid black silhouette. Golden buttons are the easiest thing to see, catching what dim light they can and reflecting in sparkles. A massive hat hangs over the newcomer’s eyes, shielding his face, but she knows it’s masked anyway.

“Hey, kid?” He calls out, and it’s unmistakable. This is the same face, same voice, that she used to watch on the news with Grandpa. She’s stunned and for a moment just slides along the ice, trying to string even half a coherent thought into place. The visitor, for his part, just leans against the wall of the rink, watching and waiting.

She pulls herself together somewhat, in the span of a minute, and skids against the ice, her skates catching in it and leaving gashes behind. So much for a peaceful moment to herself, she thinks, but it’s absent of the usual bitter anger. This is—well, she knows that costume. Her beak drops open and her heart starts to race viciously. The onset of shock has her half-breathless but somehow she manages to choke out his name. “Darkwing?”

Her voice is somehow too loud and too quiet. It echoes off the empty bleachers, same as every noise in here does, but it’s a sound made in surprise so it’s not much more than a gasp. He replies with a smile, a friendly one that his too-big hat and too-dark mask can’t obscure.

“What’re you doing out here? It’s almost two am.”

“Skating!” She chirps, as if that isn’t obvious. Her heart is starting to feel less like it’s going to leap out of her chest, and she regains her balance for the most part. She pushes off again, moving to make a loop around the rink that would put a bit of distance between them. Vaguely she wonders if her current guardians called in some help, if he’s here to haul her back. Suddenly she’s less sure about letting them take her after tonight.

She watches him the whole time she skates away, and he watches her in kind. This rink is the smaller of the two in the building, which she chose because she’s out of practice, but that means there’s only one way off the ice. One exit, and he’s standing right beside it, blocking the way. To make it worse, her only possessions are piled up over there too, including her shoes. Even if she was willing to abandon her stuff(she’s not) and run for it, if she thought she could get away(she doesn’t) she isn’t going to get anywhere in her skates.

“I noticed that. You’re pretty good at it.” He doesn’t seem to want to hurt her or take her back, so her anxiety starts to dissipate, but she’s sure something is coming to rip the rug out from under her. Isn’t it always? Adults wanting her to sit still, Gosalyn, be good. Gosalyn, stay home. Gosalyn, sports are for the boys.

She’s done listening.

“Thank you. Uh, what are you doing out here?” Her surprise is mostly faded, seeing as how he’s no more than a person standing there. Instead, she grips tighter to her hockey stick, turning white-knuckled at the thought she’s going to lose out again and be dragged somewhere she’s unhappy.

“Well, I was on my patrol, making sure the city’s safe, and I saw someone out at this hour who probably shouldn’t be. I wanted to investigate.”

“I’m fine. You can go, I’m just gonna be here a little longer.”

“Aren’t your parents going to worry about you?”

“Don’t got parents,” she declares, punctuating her sentence with a hit on the puck. It slides flawlessly into the goal, as every one has tonight. “Nobody’s gonna worry about little old me.”

“Well, I am. Worried about you, that is. You’re what, ten? And you’re out in the city alone.”

“I’m eleven,” she says boldly, chasing her puck. She raises her volume a little so he can hear. “I’m old enough. And nobody’s gonna care I’m out here, and I’ll be gone way before they open so they’re not gonna even notice.”

“Well, Miss Old-Enough, you’re still a kid, and it’s my duty as a hero to make sure you’re safe. Don’t you have a home to go back to?”

“My name is Gosalyn!” She yells, whacking the puck and shooting off after it. She catches it before it whizzes past Darkwing, and slows to a halt just out of his reach. She’s not wearing a helmet or anything, so he can see her green eyes and she can see his dark ones, though they’re kind of obscured by the shadow of his hat.

“Gosalyn,” he corrects himself, letting his question go. Her actions sort of answer that for him. His eyes peer over her, and she wonders briefly what of her physical damage he’s taking in. “Have you eaten lately, Gosalyn?”

“Uh, no,” she recalls the smashed plate and swinging fist that replaced last night’s meal. And her foster father had been stomping around at midday, so she’d hidden in her room instead of getting lunch. “Not since breakfast yesterday.”

“Do you _want_ something to eat?” He offers. The genuine concern in his voice is heavy, and like the officer the night everything changed, she knows he’s looking out for her.

“...yes, please.”

He gives her space, lets her swap skates for sneakers and lead the way outside. It’s as if he knows she’s nervous having him close enough to touch her, so he stands back. It makes it easier to trust him when he guides her to a Hamburger Hippo for some late night fries and a burger, and tells her she can have it however she wants. She thinks about coming to these restaurants with Grandpa and how she’d always get extra cheese on the burger, and she’d inevitably get some on her shirt.

DW tells her it’s a good choice, and carries her soda for her. It’s strange, having someone willing to let her choose. It’s been a while since that’s happened. They make their way to a rooftop above the nearest intersection, and watch the cars pass and the lights turn their cycle.

It’s quiet for a long moment. She scarfs down her food, hands trembling so hard that the ice in her cola clinks against itself. She doesn’t want him to tell her the meal is over when she’s still got some left, because that would just leave her hungry sooner since she didn’t get it all down. She downs her burger before the lights have cycled three times around the intersection below them.

Darkwing is quiet, at first, just like she’d always thought him to be. But then he turns to her, watching her eat from a bit of a distance. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re safe, you can slow down. I’m not gonna take it from you.”

“How did you—” Gos looks up at him, then sits up straighter, assuming her cool kid attitude again. “Yeah, whatever. What do you care about me anyway?”

“You shouldn’t be alone out here,” he murmurs, looking down at the traffic. A red car has pulled up to the light, coughing out smoke as it rumbles. She covers her nose with her sleeve, and he flicks his cape out dramatically to clear the air as the car rolls down the street.

“St Canard is a good city, but not all of the things in it are.” He shakes his head absently. “You need a roof over your head. A family.”

“I lost my family a while ago,” she says bitterly, forcing tears away. “The stupid and mean and ugly foster parents could care less.”

“I’m going to guess one of those foster parents gave you your shiner, huh?”

She pauses for a long moment. He knows anyway, she doesn’t have to say it. She watches a green station wagon approach the lights below. There’s a kid in a blue shirt sticking his whole head and shoulders out the window, spiky white hair bouncing as the car comes to a stop. She can hear the driver squawking at the kid to sit back even from this distance, and in other circumstances she would laugh. It’s as if the universe is taunting her with this loving relationship, something she wants so badly but it’s just so far out of reach.

“...He gets really angry. He threw some stuff and broke it, and—and I didn’t mean to do anything, but he started to hurt me anyway.” Gos’s voice rises in pitch as she speaks, so she takes a breath before her next sentence, trying to stay level-headed for Darkwing. “I don’t _care_ what the social worker says, I’m not gonna make them my family.”

“If he hit you, you aren’t going back. I’ll take you down to the offices in the morning and have a friend of mine make sure he stays away from you.”

Gos stops eating, slowly looking up to him. She was so sure he’d call her whiny or tell her she needed to listen to the adults in her life. Her social worker and the foster people before always did. “What?”

“People don’t run away for no reason,” he turns to her, and for the first time she can see his face entirely unobstructed by shadows. He’s looking right at her with a gentle expression. “It’s wrong to force you into a situation you don’t want to be in, especially if that situation is one you’ve obviously been hurt in. Sometimes you won’t have a choice, given that you’re a kid, and you might be in a place you don’t like. But if you’re in a place you’re unsafe? They should listen to you, and protect you. It’s awful that’s not always the case.”

“Oh. Well… yeah. I don’t want to do that.” Things fall quiet for a moment, but then Gosalyn realizes something. “You mean that from experience, don’t you, Darkwing?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” He takes to watching the road below, and his brow furrows with something she feels but can’t name. “It took me a while to meet the people I love, and I dealt with a lot of awful people before I met the good ones.”

Things fall silent between them for a long moment, but then he declares, “You’ll find that too, eventually.”

She scoffs, crumpling up a wrapper from her food. “I’d sure like to have what I did with Grandpa again, but that’s over. I kinda gave up by now on finding a home that cares like that. Nobody else wants me anymore.”

“That’s the brilliant thing about life, Gosalyn.” He gazes out at the city lights, as if they hold the secret to what he’s about to say. She looks out there too, nibbling on her fries while she listens.

“You always have a chance to find something better. There’s a lot of people out there,” he gestures with his cape, a sweeping motion encompassing the huge city and the world beyond it. “A lot of people both good and bad. Someone is bound to meet you, and to want you to become part of their life. Someone who will want you and all that spirit you’ve got.”

“...spirit?” She asks, voice small. She looks away from the sparkling city lights. Darkwing nods seriously, returning the look, and smiles a bit to reassure her. “Of course. It takes a lot of spirit to get yourself safe like you did tonight. Maybe you didn’t have a place to go, but you got out of there on your own.”

“Thanks, Darkwing,” she murmurs. His words sit heavy against her chest, settling in, and she feels warm. Safe. She did get herself safe, didn’t she? Maybe there were better ways than going to the ice rink, but she sure found capable hands to help her. And that’s pretty alright, she thinks. Grandpa would probably be proud.

She finishes her food and talks with Darkwing a while longer. Not about anything in particular, mostly just talking to fill the silence. Even just having his attention focused on her makes her feel warm inside again, though. He’s made it clear he can see her, something no one else has lately, and for that she trusts him to take her to the social worker’s office when dawn begins to break. She doesn’t much want to have him leave her, and to be alone again, but he kneels down on the front steps of the building to promise her she won’t be. He’s a hero of the shadows, but he will be there to protect her on her journey’s next step. It’s his job, he reassures her, and she feels a bit of confidence and strength in moving on. Chasing the family he promised her is out there.

It’s the first time in months she’s got someone in her corner, handing her even the smallest bit of control over what happens to her.

Her next destination is a group home in the city. Unlike the others, where the kids were just names on the waiting lists, these kids are about to be adopted. Within her first week one of the six kids vacates his bed, off to live with his family. Two of the others have met their prospective parents. The situation gives Gos a bit more hope for herself, and the kids here are all much nicer. On their best behavior to get to their families, she supposes.

And she’s only there a few weeks before she meets her own.

Drake is friendly, and she likes him immediately because he’s wearing a Darkwing shirt the day they meet. He’s also short—they’re almost the same height, and she’s eleven—and she picks on him every time they meet up. He jokes with her too, about how constantly messy her hair is and how she’s often covered in dirt from playing in the yard or street. She feels comfortable calling him Dad before the paperwork is done, even, and it’s a pretty quick process.

Launchpad’s big and not as smart, but full to the brim with kindness and fun ideas. He’s always down for buying her lunch or going to do crazy stuff, like doing every ride at the city carnival or, when she finds out he’s a pilot, taking her to fly over the city. He even lets her take the controls for a couple of minutes, and she relishes the feeling of holding the sticks for a week.

She realizes Drake is Darkwing pretty quick. He claims she just caught on because she’s smart, and she’ll take the praise! But she knows, honestly, he’s just not hiding it well. He lives for attention just like she does.

And really, living with a superhero and his pilot partner is her dream. Plus her dad has like, every tiny bit of Darkwing merch he could find, so when she gets to move in with them she’s in heaven. She gets everything she wants, and hardly ever even has to ask. It’s a bunch of her fantasy dreams of days gone by, wrapped up into a beautiful reality.

Still, it takes the heaviness of her Grandpa’s death to make her truly feel like it’s home.

The day was always bound to be a rough one, in general, but it’s really a bad day dawn to dusk. Her soccer game is rained out, and LP’s flight home from a trip with the McDucks is delayed because they can’t safely land with it so stormy. And with her new buddy Honker grounded for one of their escapades she’s got no distractions from the heavy ache that’s started to claw open her chest as she thinks more and more of Grandpa. She spends a long while thinking about that dark night, about the broken glass and the cold.

Her head turns to a sort of haze, and she can’t quite figure out why. Her room stretches out around her, full of shiny new things and evidence of love from her dads. She can hardly breathe looking at what she has while thinking of what once was. Her usual fiery spirit fades into something cold, a vice gripping her chest ‘til she starts panting, hands shaking, and she crawls under the bed hoping the closeness of it will help fill the yawning sinkhole where his love used to be.

The carpet pressed against her side and her cheek help to ground her, and the mattress creates a closer ceiling that blocks out the sensory input of the million and one things in her room. Slowly, with care and focus, she claws her way back to reality, gripping the fabric of her shirt that hangs over her shoulders until she realizes she’s made her knuckles ache, and releases it.

She hears her phone buzz on the bedside table where she left it, but ignores it. The carpet’s cool against her cheek, and she doesn’t have much energy. The familiar sense of wet, suffocating grief has filled her chest like water in a balloon and she focuses instead on breathing in, holding on, letting go, over and over again.

From her spot on the floor, one eye squished shut from the way she’s ended up, she looks to the space where the wall meets the floor. Her eyes blur with tears she doesn’t want to shed and she notices that the paint on the wall isn’t covering it very well. She’s almost laughing at this situation, because it’s kind of silly how she knew today would come, but was unprepared for this feeling anyway.

Thunder crashes outside, and she draws her knees to her chest. Stupid storm. She should be out there celebrating a soccer victory and greeting Launchdad when he gets home. The world must hate her, leaving her—another rumbling bout of thunder and a flash of lightning shuts the power clean off.

Great.

She doesn’t even feel like moving then. Dad can get the lights back on, she’s seen him have to dozens of times when she or Launchdad pop the breakers when fiddling with cars in the garage. She just lies there, in the dark, holding her knees to her chest and missing Grandpa’s laughter and dumb jokes.

Her phone buzzes again, and the lights don’t come back on. She stays still, quiet, painfully hollow….

“Gos?”

Her dad’s voice is quiet. She hears him step inside the doorway, and a pause follows. Her phone buzzes again, and she hears him looking around the room. The closet door opens, she sees his feet appear as he starts circling the bed looking for her.

She expects him to leave then, like the times before when people missed her hiding away, but this time is different. Before, she never wanted anyone to find her, and was never discovered. Today, when she’s feeling so vacant and aching, so desperate for love to fill the emptiness, she watches him kneel beside the bed and peek under it. She looks out at him, and can hardly blink in greeting.

“Hey, sweetheart. Do you want some company?”

She nods, and her cheek rubs against the carpet. It’s uncomfortable but she doesn’t have much fuel for anything more.

He lies down beside the bed. Distanced, like that rooftop night, but close enough to remind her she’s not alone in the universe.

“LP called. He’s driving home instead. It’ll be a bit longer, but he won’t miss dinner.”

Gos’s energy is zapped, so she lies still, but looks at him to show she’s listening.

“We aren’t going to patrol in the rain. Plus he’s tired, for sure. So you’ll have us all night, that’s good news. And… let me think…. Well, the power outage isn’t good. It’s the whole street at least. The good part is this means we can put a little fort up in the living room and read some darkwing comics, if you want. I just bought some batteries for the flashlights.”

She nods slowly, lifting her head a bit. Those _are_ good things.

“Okay. We can do that. I was going to make dinner, but since the power went kaput I’ll get Hamburger Hippo delivered, soon as LP gets a bit closer. Get you some fries and a burger.”

“...extra cheese?”

“Of course, sweetheart. Same as always, you can have anything you want.”

She scoots toward him, and out from her hiding place. Her heart still feels like a popped water balloon, emotions splashed everywhere, and the tears are finally here, threatening to splash on her shirt in a more literal sense. But she’s got good things that came from choices she was allowed to make, and that helps some.

He sits up, and holds her close while she needs physical comfort. She hiccups and hugs him close as she can. It hurts, this day, and all the things in it, but in the middle of her emotional hurricane, she knows she’s finally been found and brought home in every way that matters.


End file.
